Charles Kenneth Havis was visionary from the start.
He was one of 8 children born in Hubbard, Texas to a family of sharecroppers at the end of the depression in 1939.

He different from the beginning. He was a voracious reader and easily entertained himself.
In 1950’s small town Texas if you didn’t go to school, you worked in the fields and if you didn’t play sports or go the route of the Ministry, there wasn’t much a place for you.
He graduated in 1957 Hubbard, TX class of 25 and attended Baylor University 1957-59.  He then enlisted in the US Army in1961 and was sent to Vietnam on a 13-month tour of duty.

It was the Army that brought the first big change in his life and set him on the road to become an artist.  Ken recalled that he gained confidence in himself in the service and it was where he first realized he could be an artist.  The Eastern Culture and experience with mysticism was forever an influence on his artwork.

Following the military, Ken returned to study at North Texas State University in Denton and receive a BA in Advertising Design and his MA in Ceramics in 1969. He later went to the University of California in Berkeley to study glass blowing. As each step of Ken’s life blossomed, so did his artwork, from his continued exposure to eastern culture, interest in Native American beadwork, African symbolism and other realms of mystery.

From his earliest work, Ken talked of “reacting to found objects as a medium by transforming the material’s definition to create artwork that was viewed with a new meaning defined by the viewer.” Havis commented on this transformation as his “interest in the symbolism of the subconscious mind.“ Such as his work had a feminine quality that was informed by the women in his family who taught him to sew and stitched the family’s clothing and quilts.

Ken Havis continued on at NTSU as a teacher and gallery director for many years.  He inspired students with his belief that an artist should create in every facet of life and felt students had just as much to teach him as he them. 
He felt that “a true artist is a revolutionary.  A revolutionary is only someone who is being creative.” and Ken was a revolutionary in every aspect of his life through in his teaching, artwork, fashion, collecting and his ritual performances and house parties.
Ken was a huge collector of cultural artifacts and hosted what he referred to as the  “No Museum” at his home. It was filled with various collections and his artwork, installed as fabulous displays of culture, texture, color, and design. 

Ken designed much of clothing he wore which were assemblages of materials and obsessive attachments to form beautiful textile pieces which lived as he moved. His “Spirit Jacket”, a highly decorated Levis jacket was included in an international traveling exhibition and corresponding book American Denim 1975. 1976-1979 brought the national tour of the “Treasures of Tutankhamen to Dallas that Ken Havis visited which encouraged him to gold leaf much of his work during this period.  Ken explained this work as  “ritualism” when the collecting, concept and execution came together.

 Havis’ joy of life welcomed people to visit NTSU and his home which flourished in a number of exhibits of his artwork such as the Laguna Gloria Museum of Art in Austin – 1975 and New Orleans Museum of Art in 1976, The Montana Museum of Art in Montana in Bozeman - 1979, Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi in 1979, The Contemporary Art Museum in Houston – 1979, and The University of North Carolina in Charlotte – 1981.

His work continued to evolve through the years following his career at the University coming to a close.  Some in Dallas recall his “Fashion Play” in 1984 where he produced and presented a performance of handmade garments and props staged in a “rebirth” of society. There was no separation between his metaphysical credence and what he presented as visual art.

His final retrospective exhibition of his artwork was in 1993, curated by two friends Murray Smither and Kevin Curry at Dallas’s 500X art space. He tragically passed shortly following due to complications from AIDS.

Ken was magical.  Those who knew him recall his outrageous house parties, colorful performances, his highly decorated clothing, his smile, and the mysteriously beautiful artworks. 
He had the gift to transform simple mediums such as clay or found materials to become alchemy of his emboldened artwork.
Ken Havis left no door unopened in his life and lived with full heart and soul. He gave those he encountered the gift of acceptance in fully expressing themselves through creativity in art and life.

Ken Havis was a guru to the people.
- julie webb